&apt-email;
&apt-product;
<!-- The last update date -->
- <date>18 September 2009</date>
+ <date>16 January 2010</date>
</refentryinfo>
<refmeta>
</refnamediv>
<refsect1><title>Description</title>
- <para><filename>apt.conf</filename> is the main configuration file for the APT suite of
- tools, all tools make use of the configuration file and a common command line
- parser to provide a uniform environment. When an APT tool starts up it will
- read the configuration specified by the <envar>APT_CONFIG</envar> environment
- variable (if any) and then read the files in <literal>Dir::Etc::Parts</literal>
- then read the main configuration file specified by
- <literal>Dir::Etc::main</literal> then finally apply the
- command line options to override the configuration directives, possibly
- loading even more config files.</para>
-
+ <para><filename>apt.conf</filename> is the main configuration file for
+ the APT suite of tools, but by far not the only place changes to options
+ can be made. All tools therefore share the configuration files and also
+ use a common command line parser to provide a uniform environment.</para>
+ <orderedlist>
+ <para>When an APT tool starts up it will read the configuration files
+ in the following order:</para>
+ <listitem><para>the file specified by the <envar>APT_CONFIG</envar>
+ environment variable (if any)</para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>all files in <literal>Dir::Etc::Parts</literal> in
+ alphanumeric ascending order which have no or "<literal>conf</literal>"
+ as filename extension and which only contain alphanumeric,
+ hyphen (-), underscore (_) and period (.) characters -
+ otherwise they will be silently ignored.</para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>the main configuration file specified by
+ <literal>Dir::Etc::main</literal></para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>the command line options are applied to override the
+ configuration directives or to load even more configuration files.</para></listitem>
+ </orderedlist>
+ </refsect1>
+ <refsect1><title>Syntax</title>
<para>The configuration file is organized in a tree with options organized into
- functional groups. option specification is given with a double colon
+ functional groups. Option specification is given with a double colon
notation, for instance <literal>APT::Get::Assume-Yes</literal> is an option within
- the APT tool group, for the Get tool. options do not inherit from their
+ the APT tool group, for the Get tool. Options do not inherit from their
parent groups.</para>
<para>Syntactically the configuration language is modeled after what the ISC tools
<literal>//</literal> are treated as comments (ignored), as well as all text
between <literal>/*</literal> and <literal>*/</literal>, just like C/C++ comments.
Each line is of the form
- <literal>APT::Get::Assume-Yes "true";</literal> The trailing
- semicolon is required and the quotes are optional. A new scope can be
- opened with curly braces, like:</para>
+ <literal>APT::Get::Assume-Yes "true";</literal>. The trailing
+ semicolon and the quotes are required. The value must be on one line, and
+ there is no kind of string concatenation. It must not include inside quotes.
+ The behavior of the backslash "\" and escaped characters inside a value is
+ undefined and it should not be used. An option name may include
+ alphanumerical characters and the "/-:._+" characters. A new scope can
+ be opened with curly braces, like:</para>
<informalexample><programlisting>
APT {
<para>The names of the configuration items are not case-sensitive. So in the previous example
you could use <literal>dpkg::pre-install-pkgs</literal>.</para>
- <para>Two specials are allowed, <literal>#include</literal> and <literal>#clear</literal>
+ <para>Names for the configuration items are optional if a list is defined as it can be see in
+ the <literal>DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs</literal> example above. If you don't specify a name a
+ new entry will simply add a new option to the list. If you specify a name you can override
+ the option as every other option by reassigning a new value to the option.</para>
+
+ <para>Two specials are allowed, <literal>#include</literal> (which is deprecated
+ and not supported by alternative implementations) and <literal>#clear</literal>:
<literal>#include</literal> will include the given file, unless the filename
ends in a slash, then the whole directory is included.
<literal>#clear</literal> is used to erase a part of the configuration tree. The
- specified element and all its descendants are erased.</para>
+ specified element and all its descendants are erased.
+ (Note that these lines also need to end with a semicolon.)</para>
+
+ <para>The #clear command is the only way to delete a list or a complete scope.
+ Reopening a scope or the ::-style described below will <emphasis>not</emphasis>
+ override previously written entries. Only options can be overridden by addressing a new
+ value to it - lists and scopes can't be overridden, only cleared.</para>
<para>All of the APT tools take a -o option which allows an arbitrary configuration
directive to be specified on the command line. The syntax is a full option
name (<literal>APT::Get::Assume-Yes</literal> for instance) followed by an equals
sign then the new value of the option. Lists can be appended too by adding
- a trailing :: to the list name.</para>
+ a trailing :: to the list name. (As you might suspect: The scope syntax can't be used
+ on the command line.)</para>
+
+ <para>Note that you can use :: only for appending one item per line to a list and
+ that you should not use it in combination with the scope syntax.
+ (The scope syntax implicit insert ::) Using both syntaxes together will trigger a bug
+ which some users unfortunately relay on: An option with the unusual name "<literal>::</literal>"
+ which acts like every other option with a name. These introduces many problems
+ including that a user who writes multiple lines in this <emphasis>wrong</emphasis> syntax in
+ the hope to append to a list will gain the opposite as only the last assignment for this option
+ "<literal>::</literal>" will be used. Upcoming APT versions will raise errors and
+ will stop working if they encounter this misuse, so please correct such statements now
+ as long as APT doesn't complain explicit about them.</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1><title>The APT Group</title>
<listitem><para>Default release to install packages from if more than one
version available. Contains release name, codename or release version. Examples: 'stable', 'testing', 'unstable', 'lenny', 'squeeze', '4.0', '5.0*'. See also &apt-preferences;.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
-
+
<varlistentry><term>Ignore-Hold</term>
<listitem><para>Ignore Held packages; This global option causes the problem resolver to
ignore held packages in its decision making.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>Immediate-Configure</term>
- <listitem><para>Disable Immediate Configuration; This dangerous option disables some
- of APT's ordering code to cause it to make fewer dpkg calls. Doing
- so may be necessary on some extremely slow single user systems but
- is very dangerous and may cause package install scripts to fail or worse.
- Use at your own risk.</para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>Defaults to on which will cause APT to install essential and important packages
+ as fast as possible in the install/upgrade operation. This is done to limit the effect of a failing
+ &dpkg; call: If this option is disabled APT does treat an important package in the same way as
+ an extra package: Between the unpacking of the important package A and his configuration can then
+ be many other unpack or configuration calls, e.g. for package B which has no relation to A, but
+ causes the dpkg call to fail (e.g. because maintainer script of package B generates an error) which results
+ in a system state in which package A is unpacked but unconfigured - each package depending on A is now no
+ longer guaranteed to work as their dependency on A is not longer satisfied. The immediate configuration marker
+ is also applied to all dependencies which can generate a problem if the dependencies e.g. form a circle
+ as a dependency with the immediate flag is comparable with a Pre-Dependency. So in theory it is possible
+ that APT encounters a situation in which it is unable to perform immediate configuration, errors out and
+ refers to this option so the user can deactivate the immediate configuration temporarily to be able to perform
+ an install/upgrade again. Note the use of the word "theory" here as this problem was only encountered by now
+ in real world a few times in non-stable distribution versions and was caused by wrong dependencies of the package
+ in question or by a system in an already broken state, so you should not blindly disable this option as
+ the mentioned scenario above is not the only problem immediate configuration can help to prevent in the first place.
+ Before a big operation like <literal>dist-upgrade</literal> is run with this option disabled it should be tried to
+ explicitly <literal>install</literal> the package APT is unable to configure immediately, but please make sure to
+ report your problem also to your distribution and to the APT team with the buglink below so they can work on
+ improving or correcting the upgrade process.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>Force-LoopBreak</term>
<varlistentry><term>PDiffs</term>
<listitem><para>Try to download deltas called <literal>PDiffs</literal> for
Packages or Sources files instead of downloading whole ones. True
- by default.</para></listitem>
+ by default.</para>
+ <para>Two sub-options to limit the use of PDiffs are also available:
+ With <literal>FileLimit</literal> can be specified how many PDiff files
+ are downloaded at most to patch a file. <literal>SizeLimit</literal>
+ on the other hand is the maximum precentage of the size of all patches
+ compared to the size of the targeted file. If one of these limits is
+ exceeded the complete file is downloaded instead of the patches.
+ </para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>Queue-Mode</term>
this applies to all things including connection timeout and data timeout.</para>
<para>One setting is provided to control the pipeline depth in cases where the
- remote server is not RFC conforming or buggy (such as Squid 2.0.2)
+ remote server is not RFC conforming or buggy (such as Squid 2.0.2).
<literal>Acquire::http::Pipeline-Depth</literal> can be a value from 0 to 5
indicating how many outstanding requests APT should send. A value of
zero MUST be specified if the remote host does not properly linger
on TCP connections - otherwise data corruption will occur. Hosts which
- require this are in violation of RFC 2068.</para></listitem>
+ require this are in violation of RFC 2068.</para>
+
+ <para>The used bandwidth can be limited with <literal>Acquire::http::Dl-Limit</literal>
+ which accepts integer values in kilobyte. The default value is 0 which deactivates
+ the limit and tries uses as much as possible of the bandwidth (Note that this option implicit
+ deactivates the download from multiple servers at the same time.)</para>
+
+ <para><literal>Acquire::http::User-Agent</literal> can be used to set a different
+ User-Agent for the http download method as some proxies allow access for clients
+ only if the client uses a known identifier.</para>
+ </listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>https</term>
- <listitem><para>HTTPS URIs. Cache-control and proxy options are the same as for
- <literal>http</literal> method.
- <literal>Pipeline-Depth</literal> option is not supported yet.</para>
+ <listitem><para>HTTPS URIs. Cache-control, Timeout, AllowRedirect, Dl-Limit and
+ proxy options are the same as for <literal>http</literal> method and will also
+ default to the options from the <literal>http</literal> method if they are not
+ explicitly set for https. <literal>Pipeline-Depth</literal> option is not
+ supported yet.</para>
<para><literal>CaInfo</literal> suboption specifies place of file that
holds info about trusted certificates.
as specified in <filename>/etc/fstab</filename>. It is possible to provide
alternate mount and unmount commands if your mount point cannot be listed
in the fstab (such as an SMB mount and old mount packages). The syntax
- is to put <literallayout>"/cdrom/"::Mount "foo";</literallayout> within
+ is to put <literallayout>/cdrom/::Mount "foo";</literallayout> within
the cdrom block. It is important to have the trailing slash. Unmount
commands can be specified using UMount.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<para>Note that at run time the <literal>Dir::Bin::<replaceable>Methodname</replaceable></literal> will
be checked: If this setting exists the method will only be used if this file exists, e.g. for
the bzip2 method (the inbuilt) setting is <literallayout>Dir::Bin::bzip2 "/bin/bzip2";</literallayout>
- Note also that list entries specified on the commandline will be added at the end of the list
+ Note also that list entries specified on the command line will be added at the end of the list
specified in the configuration files, but before the default entries. To prefer a type in this case
over the ones specified in in the configuration files you can set the option direct - not in list style.
This will not override the defined list, it will only prefix the list with this type.</para>
these warnings are most of the time false negatives. Future versions will maybe include a way to
really prefer uncompressed files to support the usage of local mirrors.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
+
+ <varlistentry><term>GzipIndexes</term>
+ <listitem><para>
+ When downloading <literal>gzip</literal> compressed indexes (Packages, Sources, or
+ Translations), keep them gzip compressed locally instead of unpacking
+ them. This saves quite a lot of disk space at the expense of more CPU
+ requirements when building the local package caches. False by default.
+ </para></listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
+ <varlistentry><term>Languages</term>
+ <listitem><para>The Languages subsection controls which <filename>Translation</filename> files are downloaded
+ and in which order APT tries to display the Description-Translations. APT will try to display the first
+ available Description in the Language which is listed at first. Languages can be defined with their
+ short or long Languagecodes. Note that not all archives provide <filename>Translation</filename>
+ files for every Language - especially the long Languagecodes are rare, so please
+ inform you which ones are available before you set here impossible values.</para>
+ <para>The default list includes "environment" and "en". "<literal>environment</literal>" has a special meaning here:
+ It will be replaced at runtime with the languagecodes extracted from the <literal>LC_MESSAGES</literal> environment variable.
+ It will also ensure that these codes are not included twice in the list. If <literal>LC_MESSAGES</literal>
+ is set to "C" only the <filename>Translation-en</filename> file (if available) will be used.
+ To force apt to use no Translation file use the setting <literal>Acquire::Languages=none</literal>. "<literal>none</literal>"
+ is another special meaning code which will stop the search for a fitting <filename>Translation</filename> file.
+ This can be used by the system administrator to let APT know that it should download also this files without
+ actually use them if the environment doesn't specify this languages. So the following example configuration will
+ result in the order "en, de" in an english and in "de, en" in a german localization. Note that "fr" is downloaded,
+ but not used if APT is not used in a french localization, in such an environment the order would be "fr, de, en".
+ <programlisting>Acquire::Languages { "environment"; "de"; "en"; "none"; "fr"; };</programlisting></para></listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
</variablelist>
</para>
</refsect1>
multiply calls of dpkg. Without further options dpkg will use triggers only in between his
own run. Activating these options can therefore decrease the time needed to perform the
install / upgrade. Note that it is intended to activate these options per default in the
- future, but as it changes the way APT calling dpkg drastical it needs a lot more testing.
+ future, but as it changes the way APT calling dpkg drastically it needs a lot more testing.
<emphasis>These options are therefore currently experimental and should not be used in
productive environments.</emphasis> Also it breaks the progress reporting so all frontends will
currently stay around half (or more) of the time in the 100% state while it actually configures
all packages.</para>
- <para>Note that it is not garanteed that APT will support these options or that these options will
+ <para>Note that it is not guaranteed that APT will support these options or that these options will
not cause (big) trouble in the future. If you have understand the current risks and problems with
these options, but are brave enough to help testing them create a new configuration file and test a
combination of options. Please report any bugs, problems and improvements you encounter and make sure
<variablelist>
<varlistentry><term>DPkg::NoTriggers</term>
- <listitem><para>Add the no triggers flag to all dpkg calls (expect the ConfigurePending call).
+ <listitem><para>Add the no triggers flag to all dpkg calls (except the ConfigurePending call).
See &dpkg; if you are interested in what this actually means. In short: dpkg will not run the
- triggers then this flag is present unless it is explicit called to do so in an extra call.
+ triggers when this flag is present unless it is explicitly called to do so in an extra call.
Note that this option exists (undocumented) also in older apt versions with a slightly different
meaning: Previously these option only append --no-triggers to the configure calls to dpkg -
now apt will add these flag also to the unpack and remove calls.</para></listitem>
The "<literal>smart</literal>" way is it to configure only packages which need to be configured before
another package can be unpacked (Pre-Depends) and let the rest configure by dpkg with a call generated
by the next option. "<literal>no</literal>" on the other hand will not configure anything and totally
- relay on dpkg for configuration (which will at the moment fail if a Pre-Depends is encountered).
- Setting this option to another than the all value will implicit activate also the next option per
+ rely on dpkg for configuration (which will at the moment fail if a Pre-Depends is encountered).
+ Setting this option to another than the all value will implicitly activate also the next option per
default as otherwise the system could end in an unconfigured status which could be unbootable!
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<listitem><para>If this option is set apt will call <command>dpkg --configure --pending</command>
to let dpkg handle all required configurations and triggers. This option is activated automatic
per default if the previous option is not set to <literal>all</literal>, but deactivating could be useful
- if you want to run APT multiple times in a row - e.g. in an installer. In this sceneries you could
+ if you want to run APT multiple times in a row - e.g. in an installer. In these sceneries you could
deactivate this option in all but the last run.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>DPkg::TriggersPending</term>
<varlistentry><term>PackageManager::UnpackAll</term>
<listitem><para>As the configuration can be deferred to be done at the end by dpkg it can be
tried to order the unpack series only by critical needs, e.g. by Pre-Depends. Default is true
- and therefore the "old" method of ordering in verious steps by everything. While both method
+ and therefore the "old" method of ordering in various steps by everything. While both method
were present in earlier APT versions the <literal>OrderCritical</literal> method was unused, so
this method is very experimental and needs further improvements before becoming really useful.
</para></listitem>
after unpacking. It will be a good idea to do this quite early in the upgrade process as these
these configure calls require currently also <literal>DPkg::TriggersPending</literal> which
will run quite a few triggers (which maybe not needed). Essentials get per default a high score
- but the immediate flag is relativly low (a package which has a Pre-Depends is higher rated).
+ but the immediate flag is relatively low (a package which has a Pre-Depends is higher rated).
These option and the others in the same group can be used to change the scoring. The following
example shows the settings with there default values.
<literallayout>OrderList::Score {
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
-->
+
</variablelist>
</refsect1>
projects / apt.git / blobdiff